“What did she want orc warriors for?” Stryke asked.
“To help her defeat a warlock called Tentarr Arngrim. He had watched power corrupt her, make her cruel and meddlesome. When he tried to stop her, she turned on him. The irony was that Vermegram and Tentarr Arngrim had once been lovers. They even had a child together before she became evil.” He pulled Sanara into an embrace. “
This
child. My daughter.”
There was general uproar.
“This is too fucking much,” Haskeer complained.
“You’re asking us to swallow a lot, Serapheim,” Alfray told him.
Serapheim held up his hands for silence, and got it. “I am Tentarr Arngrim, once a mighty sorcerer, now much reduced.” The sheer force of his words held them. “It was I who made the instrumentalities, who fashioned them from alchemy and tempered them with magic when the power was full in me.”
“Why?”
“To make it possible for the elder races to return to their home worlds, should they so choose. For that I needed control, and in essence the instrumentalities were a key. I brought them here. But Vermegram had her warriors steal them and hide them away. That led to war between us. She died with only a fraction of her powers, but I was depleted too. By the time my body had recovered from its wounds, the instrumentalities were scattered, the magic all but lost. The stars became stuff of myth, and I was never able to make any more. I have waited aeons for them all to be found. But I knew they would be. I knew when the right beings came they would hear the music of the stars.”
There was a renewed clamour at the door. They hardly noticed.
“I told you they were singing to me!” Haskeer exclaimed.
“If they were,” Serapheim told him, “then you must have a brain . . .
something
like your captain’s. There’s a bit of sport in you too, Sergeant.”
Haskeer grinned, full of himself.
“That could be the most amazing thing you’ve told us,” Coilla remarked dryly.
“I don’t say your comrade has as highly sharpened a mind as Stryke —”
“No,” Jup said, “he’s a dolt.”
Haskeer gave him a lemon-suck look.
“
Unpolished diamond
might be a better description,” the wizard concluded diplomatically.
Again the Sluagh assaulted the door. Thick as it was, a tiny crack appeared between its two halves. “Now we must move for the other stars and activate the portal.” He could see that doubts still lingered. “What is there for you here? You must accept that this world belongs to my kind, whatever their faults or virtues.”
“And leave humans to wallow in their own shit after all the destruction they’ve wrought?” Coilla remarked.
“Perhaps it won’t be that way forever. Things just might improve.”
“You’ll understand we find that hard to believe.”
Thin, worm-like tentacles began to creep through the gap in the doors. Sanara aimed her weapon at them. The bulb of the tube filled with light, then shot out in a beam of golden power. A shriek echoed through the warband’s minds. The worms had turned to smoking shreds.
“Some of you will need to stay and guard the portal,” Serapheim suggested, “while the rest go after the instrumentalities.”
Haskeer liked the sound of that. “Now you’re talking. All this jaw-wagging’s doing my head in.”
Stryke picked the grunts to stay with the portal, along with Sanara and Serapheim, and added, “You’ll be here too, Alfray.”
“Leaving the oldest out of the action again, is that it?”
Stryke drew him aside. “That’s why I want you here. We daren’t lose the portal. It’s too important. I need somebody experienced to steady this crew. You can see how jumpy some of them are.”
Alfray seemed to accept that.
Sanara joined them. “Hear me on this, Stryke. I know you won’t like the idea, but you should leave the one star you have with me.” She headed off his protest. “It will help me draw power from the portal to keep your men safe. Besides, now you’re attuned to the song of the stars the Sluagh will not be able to hide them from you. But they could if your mind was filled with this one’s presence.”
She was right, he didn’t like it, but it made sense. He took the star from his jerkin and handed it to her.
As the raiding party formed up, Coilla and Serapheim found themselves standing apart from the others. Something was troubling her. “You talked about redeeming yourself. But from what you’ve said, this whole mess was Vermegram’s fault.”
“Not all of it. You see . . . Well . . . you were loyal to Jennesta at the time and . . .”
“Spit it out.”
“I commissioned the kobolds to snatch the first instrumentality from you,” he confessed.
“You devious
bastard
,” she hissed.
“As I said, you were loyal to my daughter then. Or at least I thought you were. I’d just made the decision to try re-gathering the stars and —”
“And using the kobolds seemed a good idea. But they double-crossed you, right?”
He nodded.
“So you got us into this in the first place. Well, you and our own lack of discipline after the raid on Homefield.” She glanced at the band. “I can imagine their reaction to
that
piece of news. But I won’t tell them until we’re through this. If we
do
get through. We’ve got enough on our plates.”
He quietly thanked her.
At that moment, the door gave. Serapheim hurried towards it. Sanara joined him. They levelled their glass weapons at the mass of Sluagh trying to get in. Blasts of searing yellow light sliced into the creatures. There were hideous shrieks. A stink of burning flesh filled the air.
“That’s the last of these,” Serapheim announced, throwing his glass tube aside, “they’re drained. You’re on your own now, Wolverines.”
“If we get separated, meet back here,” Stryke instructed them. “Now
move!
”
The band set out, wading through the mass of pulpy bodies.
Stryke wasn’t aware of the strange mental tug that called him back to the star he’d left below until it faded. By that time they were on their way out of the cellar’s labyrinth.
But as they ran up yet another flight of steps, he was aware of the first notes of a celestial song somewhere above. Seconds later, they reached another dimly lit corridor, with a large open chamber in front of them.
It was filled with demons.
Something like a triumphal chord crashed into his mind as Stryke led the charge.
The Sluagh never knew what hit them. They seemed deaf and blind to all but the joined stars, sitting on a table in their midst. Spears sliced the air, lancing through demons hanging down from the ceiling. Jup’s axe bit deep into a shaggy grey back while Coilla decapitated another Sluagh with a frenzy of hacking.
Now the monsters began to fight back. Perhaps a dozen of them turned, their limbs flowing into new and deadly shapes. One, a serpent, instantly formed a dragonlike maw and whipped round, its hideous jaws salivating. Once again the Sluagh began to pour their foul acid pain into the orcs’ minds. Some of the grunts toppled, hands battened to their ears, but the rest fought grimly on.
At last the remaining Sluagh gave way before the Wolverines’ onslaught. Most of the demons were bleeding darkly on the floor. Scattered limbs were still twitching. The last two monsters had been pushed back towards the far wall. In one last desperate welter of claws and fangs they tried to get back to the stars, but half the Wolverines were between them and their goal. Defeated, dripping ichor from a score of wounds, they turned and fled, undulating rapidly down through an open stairwell.
As they disappeared, so did their gift of pain. The Wolverines pulled themselves together, astonished to find themselves alive. Haskeer turned to scoop the stars from the table.
They weren’t there. Neither was Stryke.
In the mêlée, he had seen a Sluagh snatch the stars and scurry to an open balcony with them. Dextrously, the creature began climbing the outside of the palace. Now Stryke was bounding up a staircase, a spear in his hand, hoping to catch up with it.
Above him the stairs split, leading off in two different directions. And there was the Sluagh, spidering downwards on the farther side, not twenty paces from him. With all his strength he hurled the spear. The creature dropped like a stone.
It was wounded, not dead. Pushing out a claw to the stars it had dropped, it tried to pull them closer. Stryke dashed forward and sliced its limb clean through. But the Sluagh wasn’t finished. It shot out a blade-like appendage and gashed his shoulder. Stryke quickly retreated, clutching the wound, and watched the thing die. Then he grabbed the stars and ran.
As he reached the point where the stairs branched he heard sounds of combat. He threw himself into the shadows. A pack of Sluagh slithered into sight, and they were retreating from a greater force. He blinked through the gloom, trying to make out who. Then he saw them.
Humans and orcs.
Manis
.
Stryke was almost shockproof after recent revelations, but this new twist took some beating. The only comfort he could take was that, although he had no idea what they were doing here, the Manis would put more pressure on the Sluagh. Allies, but not necessarily friends. In a moment they would reach the joining of the stairways and block his downward flight. Tucking the stars into his jerkin, he took the only course open to him and went up.
Closing his mind to the pain of his wound, which was trouble-some but far from the worst he’d taken, he paused to listen at the next landing. The echoing clash of weapons was fading away. Presumably the Sluagh and Manis had gone down, the way he’d intended travelling. Moving quietly, sword at the ready, he continued climbing upwards, looking for a way to outflank the strangers and get back down to the portal.
He thought he must be somewhere near the palace’s broad front. By a window, he stopped to knot a tourniquet round his upper arm. Then movement outside caught his eye. He peered through a broken pane, past the fringe of icicles on the casement.
A seething army sprawled across the wintry plain. Columns of soldiers were heading towards the palace. Others clustered around the entrance below.
The sound of halting footsteps drew him from the sight. He turned, his blade up and ready.
Somebody limped out of the gloom.
Stryke couldn’t believe it. Nor did he exactly need it at a time like this.
“What does it take to kill you?” he said. Though in truth, the one he addressed looked half dead anyway.
“It ain’t that easy,” Micah Lekmann replied. Insanity blazed in his eyes. “I don’t know how I got here, or you neither, but I can’t believe I’ve been given another chance to kill you. Maybe there are gods after all.”
The man was clearly deranged. Stryke thought of him tracking them through snow and ice in his skimpy clothes. His eyes were red-rimmed, the fingers of his left hand blackened with frostbite.
“This is crazy, Lekmann,” he said. “Give it up.”
“No way!” His sword lashed out, low and dangerous. Stryke jumped out of its path. The bounty hunter, a crazed grin plastered on his face, kept coming, thrusting again and again with the fury of a madman.
Stryke parried and fought back. His counterblows seemed feeble for all the effect they had. Lekmann drank them up and kept coming. They battered it out, up and down the corridor, Stryke desperate to find an opening and end another distraction he didn’t need. It wasn’t proving easy. The human seemed to have dispensed with fear and caution. He fought like a ravening beast.
Suddenly Stryke was blinded by an intense flare of light. Bewildered, he pulled back out of range, straining to recover his vision. When it returned there were motes in his eyes, as though he’d been staring at the sun. But that didn’t obscure what he was looking at.
Lekmann stood in front of him, quite still, his sword at his feet.
He had a gaping hole in his chest. Broken ribs showed white in the spilling gore. The edge of the wound was charred and smoking. Through it, Stryke caught a glimpse of the wall beyond.
Almost casually, Lekmann lowered his head and stared at the damage. He didn’t look as if he was in agony, though he must have been. The expression he wore was one of dazed affrontedness. Then he disgorged a mouthful of blood, swayed like a drunk and went down, face first. Smouldering.
As Stryke gaped, trying to make sense of what had happened, another figure moved from more distant shadows.
Jennesta’s mouth twisted in an ugly grimace as she saw him. The scream she let out, equal parts rage and triumph, cut through him like a blade. Her hands came up, presumably to deal him a similar fate.
He was already moving. Even so, he barely managed to avoid the dazzling gout of lightning she flung at him. It struck a carved pillar a hairsbreadth away, pulverising the marble and sending shards flying.
Stumbling, in pain, he vaulted down the next staircase. Another bolt hit, over his head, bringing down a plaster shower. He half jumped, half fell, down the broad flight of steps. In a corridor off the landing below, Mani troopers were battling more Sluagh. He dodged past them and pounded down the next flight, letting the song of the stars guide him back to the portal.
The odds were against him making it.
“Do you sense something?” Serapheim asked, without looking round.
His back to the gemmed portal, he stared about the chamber. Nothing moved, though faint vapours were rising from the downed Sluagh at the entrance.
“Yes,” Sanara answered. “They’re close.”
“Who are?” Alfray said.
As if in reply, one of the grunts near the door signalled urgently. Seconds later, the hunting party ran in.
Alfray scanned their ranks. “Where’s Stryke?”
“We were hoping he was here,” Coilla told him. She explained what had happened.
“For what it’s worth, I have felt no disturbance in the life web indicating he might be dead,” Serapheim declared.
Haskeer said, “What?”
“A question of sensitivity. There’s no time to explain now. The stars?”
“I don’t know,” Coilla admitted. “Maybe Stryke has them. They went missing the same time he did. But listen! There’s a whole army of Manis storming the place. They’re engaging the Sluagh.”